No, It’s Not Creation-ism!

So I’ve been searching for the past hour for a poster of Planet Earth as seen from space – a visual image to go with the Neil Armstrong quote describing what he saw when he looked back from the moon:It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

This Sunday, we begin the church’s observance of the Season of Creation. Not creation-ism. Unfortunately, when you put the words ‘church’ and ‘creation’ together, many people get the wrong idea; they think it’s about the pseudoscience that holds to a literal reading of the Genesis creation story and works against the teaching of evolution in schools. So, no, the season of creation is definitely not about that!

It is about taking seriously the care of creation as a spiritual matter – not as dominators, but as co-inhabitants of an interwoven web of existence. This year, the first Sunday of the season is Planet Earth Sunday – hence the poster. To my surprise, I can’t find one (yes, I know, I waited until the last minute) – even at the Lawrence Hall of Science and the Chabot Space & Science Center bookstores. But I did find an inflatable Earth ball! I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do with it. Somehow try to get into the moon boots of Neil Armstrong and feel both the wonder of Earth’s beauty and the smallness of our place in the whole scheme of things.

There is a way for ‘church’ and ‘creation’ to go together – or ‘church’ and ‘science,’ to put it into an even broader perspective. This is the mission of the folks who sign us up every year to observe Evolution Sunday. I’ve always struggled with that because this is bigger than just one day. We need to make every Sunday Evolution Sunday.

But now at least we have a whole season. And tomorrow – Planet Earth Sunday – we’re going to have a ball!

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